True on the digit by digit code decryption. That I can forgive in the name of building tension and “counting down” in a visible way for the movie viewer. “When will it have the launch code?!” “In either 7 nano seconds or 12 years…”
If they had been more accurate, it would have looked like the Bender xmas execution scene from Futurama:
https://www.youtube.com/v/aRdRZ6TKo4s?t=25s
I did like the fact that they showed war-dialing and doing research to find a way into the system. It’s also interesting that they showed some secure practices, like the fact there was no banner identifying the system or OS, giving less info to a would be hacker. Granted, now a days it would have the official DoD banner identifying it as a DoD system.
I remember with Windows 95, LAN Manager passwords were hashed in two 7 digit sections which made extracting user password from the password hash file trivial:
https://techgenix.com/how-cracked-windows-password-part1/
Looks like it was worse than I remember. The passwords were first converted to all upper case first!
Do a search for you server OS + STIG
Then, for each service you’re hosting on that server, do a search for:
Service/Program name + STIG/Benchmark
There’s tons of work already done by the vendors in conjunction with the DoD (and CIS) to create lists of potential vulnerable settings that can be corrected before deploying the server.
Along with this, you can usually find scripts and/or Ansible playbooks that will do most of the hardening for you. Though it’s a good Idea to understand what you do and do not need done.